Meet My Weak and Impressionable Friend; the Truth
“The truth is complex” says a grizzled, world-weary veteran of government/corporate/military cover-ups in whatever movie you’ve seen in the conspiracy and cover-up thriller sub-genre, often to a young, idealistic, and physically attractive investigative journalist/lawyer. I’ll admit, it’s a nice line, and well thought out, despite it being total baloney/balogna/braunschweiger. What this villain should be saying is “the truth of the matter is so horrifying and damning to those above me, it has been subdued and replaced with lies”. Not as catchy but more accurate. For, you see, truth is never complex. It is objective, not malleable. It cannot be changed, nor suppressed for very long. If a hero in one of these movies ever made a statement like this, one could even accuse Hollywood of encouraging the idea of subjective truth. But of course, they are.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit for your consideration exhibit A: Harry Potter. Now, the bespectacled geek with the eminently punchable face never once utters this objectionable line of dialogue. But he does believe in the idea of truth not serving the situation. Not only does he lie to his adult superiors, he lies to them often. Not only does he lie often, he is rewarded with victories in his struggles for lying. Not only that, but he’s encouraged to lie by Albus Dumbledore who, by any metric, is a replacement father for Harry. Please stop stretching your fingers in preparation for writing an angry “just another crazy Christian railing against Harry Potter” response. That’s been done, and it doesn’t apply here. I read and was entertained by the books. While lacking in fantasy writing skill compared to Lewis and Tolkien, they are wonderful books with some good ideas refreshingly combined with some old ones. But I did make my kids wait to read the books until they had wrapped their minds around situational ethics. That’s my prerogative as a parent, so there.
Now, apply Harry and Dumbledore’s relationship to the real world. Did your high school principal ever encourage you to lie to get out of a sticky situation, particularly to one of his less liked teachers? Lord help a school where that happens. Did your father ever tell you to lie in order to accomplish your noble or questionable goals so as to expediently see them done? Lord save a household where this is the norm.
“Dad, I really like this girl at school. She’s super pretty and smart but I’m scared to ask her out.”
“Well son, just tell her that you’re getting a lot of D-1 school attention for your pitching skills.”
What a gross proposition. Other than Islam, I don’t know of another major faith which morally allows lying. Islam is even limited in allowances for lying. If you lie to maintain a loving relationship, or lie to an infidel, you are all clear. I’ve studied this matter straight from the Quran and had it confirmed by Muslim friends, so calm down. This isn’t another case of “angry Christian railing against Islam.”, so don’t bother composing your response. It’s been done. I love Muslims and bear not even a shred of ill will towards them. I know enough about their faith to make an educated comment on it, as many of them know the same of my faith.
But let’s go beyond that. The linguistic gymnastics in widespread use today certainly do. Not contented with lying, people are now presuming to mold the truth. To change it. To own it. This would be a good time to shudder in disgust.
Faced with the threat of sexual harassment lawsuits coming from his longtime secret lover, New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey announced in a famous 2004 press conference “My truth is that I am a gay American.” This was a turning point in our use of the language, so far as I can discern. With the use of my he claimed ownership of truth. Ever since then, people have taken that ball and run circles around the globe faster than Superman on a turn-back-time mission. You’ll see blogs, comment threads, and conversations littered with possessive pronouns claiming ownership of truth. Live your truth. Stay true to yourself. Our truth. My truth. We all scream for subjective truth. Now please, don’t start composing your “another angry English teacher railing against contemporary usage of possessive pronouns” response. That’s not been done though a part of me wishes it was. It might get me clicks. Seems to be quite an esoteric blog post at this point though.
The truth is, the truth is not your buddy. You can’t call it in a hurried moment and ask it to cover for you because you told your parents you were going to the basketball game but ended up falling asleep at your girlfriend’s house. You can’t place it on a spectrum. Truth and untruth are mutually exclusive. You can’t put it on a potter’s wheel and mold it to your liking. You can’t plant a flag in the newly acquired territory of Truthlahoma after sending the indigenous people down the Trail of Tears. You can’t peer pressure it into smoking a blunt with you behind the baseball dugouts during lunch period. There’s no BOGO free sale at the local Kroger on slices of truth. You don’t own it, nor can you.
One of the basic tenets, and really non-negotiable tenets of the justice system is the establishment of the truth. Judges, tasked with the unenviable chore of determining truth when it can be safely assumed one or both opposing parties are lying, have to establish the truth of what happened and what to do about it. Critics of the judiciary often levy the accusation that for some, particularly the rich, truth is for sale. I’d argue it really isn’t. Man’s corruptible nature is for sale. Truth, in its purest abstract form, remains unflinching and immovable.
Why is truth so important to this system? If truth can be changed, an entire branch of government crumbles, along with its propositional language. Lord help us if that day comes, as justice will no longer be the highest goal of the judicial branch. Doomsday prediction, you say? Tell me untruth hasn’t brought down human structures before.
You can’t change, mold, sell, or corrupt the truth. You can, however believe something to be truth and something else to be untruth. The current transgender debate hinges on belief of what is truth. Enough words have been written on this subject lately to fill the oceans and flood the dry lands, so I won’t join in. I will say that both sides make opposing truth claims. The conservative side, often in line with the Christian view of gender, stakes its claims on the transcendent authority of a creator God. I will credit Ravi Zacharias (though it may not have originated with him) on the following aphorism: When you sling mud, you get your hands dirty and you lose ground. I’m not a fan of mudslinging without offering solutions, but I could be accused of it coming up. The liberal progressive side of this debate, often in line with secular humanism, stakes its claims on societal trends and majority beliefs in the psychological world. I’m sorry to all my progressive brethren, but this is unwise at its best.
Society is ever evolving. It is capricious, whimsical, and unpredictable. What the majority accepts with love today may be rejected as evil tomorrow. Where’s the higher authority one can point to as its rock and foundation? Government? Even a cursory glance at legislative history will show the elasticity of government’s view of what is moral, right, and just. Monarchies? We rejected absolute monarchs when we fired shots at Lexington and Concord. Celebrities? Lord save any country which looks to living idols for its truth claims. Those people can just be…weird to the nth degree. Parents? How many times have they let you down? Scientific and psychology majors? Science doesn’t establish truth. It examines facts and tries to disprove them, often with great biases, nor are they immune to the aforementioned capriciousness. I have great parents and they still let me down because they are fallible. I’d say anyone who points to any of these for their deeply held beliefs and propositional language needs to do some soul-searching. All of them will let you down, particularly if you are a deist. If you’re an atheist, you’ve got no choice but to adopt societal constructs, governmental edicts, and maybe even personal codes as your authority.
In that case, Lord help us if we fall prey to every man being a law unto himself. Christians will realize that this topic and so many others go all the way back to the first lie in the Garden of Eden. Even if you scornfully regard the Bible as fairy tale, you must accept its importance in the aggregate of legends and myths which help people define, understand, and cope with reality. In the story, the serpent lies to Eve, telling her that if she eats of the forbidden tree, she will be as God, knowing (determining) good from evil. The Christian and deist can point to a higher authority in the debate of what is immovable and unchangeable truth while living in peace with an untruthful society so long as said society doesn’t compel them to violate their conscience. The secular humanist must force others through argument, legislation, and majority rule to accept their version of the truth, desperately hoping it doesn’t change to their perceived detriment in their lifetime. I am a weak an feeble creature. I don’t know that I’d have the courage to even leave the house were I in such a state.
In his DVD (those are what came chronologically between VHS and streaming) commentary to A Beautiful Mind, director Ron Howard, during one scene taking portraying many patients at a mental hospital suffering from delusions, rhetorically asks (in my paraphrased form based on my imperfect memory ) “How do you tell someone that their reality isn’t reality?” I don’t know the best way when it comes to those who are sick and suffering, but I do know that telling them they can define reality themselves will only make them sicker.
Even so Lord, come quickly.
